While making his new movie “Skidmarks” that opened this week in San Diego, local filmmaker Karl Kozak discovered that comedy is more fun than drama. “It’s a little bit of a problem, “ he said, “they kept kicking me off the camera dolly because we’d be in the middle of a scene and I’d be laughing and the operator’d say ‘c’mon man, you’re makin’ the dolly shake again.”

The crew of "Skidmarks" on location in an

un-airconditioned grade school gymnasium

in Del Cerro near the San Diego State campus.

Copyright©2007 sandiego.com, Inc.

Five years ago, Karl got the idea for Skidmarks from his friends in the ambulance business here in San Diego. An independent film producer with his company Diversa Films, Karl previously developed “Out of the Black” and “To Hell with Love” cutting his teeth in the film business. The former tells the story of two brothers probing the mysteries surrounding the death of their father. “To Hell with Love” tells the gritty tale of a beleaguered writer with an unpublished novel and a troubled love life. “Making a movie is serious enough,” Karl said. “In a comedy, everybody’s in a great mood.”

Skidmarks chronicles the adventures of two ambulance firms and the EMTs (emergency medical technicians) who compete with each other. EMTs require significantly less training than a paramedic and median income in the US for an EMT is $27,720 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. At $13 an hour with training limited to some trauma management, respiratory issues, cardiac emergencies and patient assessment, the premise of the story is the workaday duties of transporting seniors to rest homes, first response to what may or may not be a crisis and the youth of the average EMT.

“We cast the film with all non-SAG (Screen Actors Guild) talent because we wanted fresh faces,” Karl said. “We didn’t want anyone the audience would recognize from a well known role. We had several read throughs of the script and got to talk a lot about each role and then we just let the comedy develop. We were really fortunate to get a very talented cast that ran with the ideas. There’s an element of stand up improvisation.”

A cast member gets makeup attention.

With the powerful lights and no air, the

temperature in the gym was over 100°

Copyright©2007 sandiego.com, Inc.

Skidmarks stars Kathy Uyen, Les Jennings, Mikey Post, Scott Dittman, Tyler Poelle. The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) confirms the newcomer status of the cast. Most notably, Tyler has appeared on the long running San Diego based tv series “Veronica Mars” and the tv drama “Criminal Minds”; Mikey first appeared in the 2001 movie “Black Knight” and worked as associate producer on last year’s “Factory Girl”.

“Against the advice of my casting director,” Karl said, “I went after new talent which meant we had to work a little harder to find the right group for this movie, but it was worth it.” The casting process focused on young actors with good improvisational skills, a potent mix . "We put them up in a dorm on the San Diego State University campus which saved us a bundle in hotel room costs," he said, "but it'll probably be a while before they let another film crew do that." Apparently, the cast had a good time on AND off the set.

The film was shot entirely in a digital format, the same cameras that were used to produce "Sin City" and "Star Wars". "We didn't make a single print," Karl said.

When asked what was new to him on this film, Karl said that he was impressed with how much police involvement was required to shut down the streets where they filmed.

The film is being marketed mostly through electronic means. Even without a major distribution house behind it, Karl plans to take it to 20 major cities in the US himself. The film shows at the Ultra Start Theater at the Hazard Center in Mission Valley through Thursday, October 11th.